By Dave Kansas

The credit-default swap for U.S. 5-year sovereign debt rose 16% to 50 after the S&P move, meaning it would cost 50,000 euros to insure 10 million euros of 5-year U.S. sovereign debt, according to data-provider Markit. On Friday, that costs was about 43,000 euros. (Note: This post previously incorrectly quoted these prices in dollars. U.S. CDS are priced in euros, non-U.S. CDS are prices in dollars.)

By comparison, Germany, also AAA, has a CDS price of 46. The UK, also AAA, is at 57. Bedraggled Greece is at an eye-popping 1215 — $1.215 million to insure $5 million of five-year Greek debt.

The spread between U.S. 10-year debt yields and similar German bund yields is 0.162 percentage points. That’s up from 0.04 percentage points on Friday. The U.K. spread is nearly twice as high at 0.285 percentage points.

Other AAA spreads vs. similar German bund yields are even higher than the U.S. and U.K. Austria at 0.469 percentage points, the Netherlands at 0.293 percentage points, France at 0.368 percentage points.

These market figures will raise some questions as to why these countries aren’t also on a negative outlook.

Add a Comment

Thanks for reading MarketBeat. We would like to direct you to MoneyBeat, the Wall Street Journal’s brand new global blog. MoneyBeat unites MarketBeat, The Source, Overheard and all the Deal Journal blogs, bringing together all the market, M&A, IPO and hedge-fund news from those blogs into a 24-hour hub for finance news. Check it out and let us know what you think at moneyblog@wsj.com.

About MarketBeat

MarketBeat looks under the hood of Wall Street each day, finding market-moving news, analyzing trends and highlighting noteworthy commentary from the best blogs and research. MarketBeat is updated frequently throughout the day, helping investors stay on top of what’s happening in the markets. Lead writers Paul Vigna and Steven Russolillo spearhead the MarketBeat team, with contributions from other Journal reporters and editors. Have a comment? Write to paul.vigna@wsj.com or steven.russolillo@wsj.com.